III. PHYSICAL SETTING

B. Man-made Features

1. Relative Positions of Principal Features

d) Village Architecture

Captain Rousseau reported: “Above the fort there are about thirty houses, with galleries around, covered with shingles, which form two streets. Below the fort there are about a dozen quite pretty houses [ plots] of four by four arpents.”[23]

The factory buildings erected by the United States in the years 1806-10 were typical of the village architecture. Samuel Treat, describing the factory, wrote:

The present state of the buildings are: the dwelling House (in which the business has been some time transacted) is 20 ft by 33, one-story, pitched roof piazzas front and rear, roof over all, shingles and painted with eave troughs, two bed rooms finished, one above and one on piazza, seven windows . . . all glazed with blinds, two windows besides not glazed, but with Shutters, small sitting room finished except the ceiling, which . . . [has] only laths overhead. The large room or kitchen has only a rough floor laid, but is well secured and used as the store.

At some distance is the [illegible] Store House and Skin Room, strong oak frame 20 by 38 feet, 2 Stories, the lower closed in all around with a small room, all the materials provided for the completing the building. . . .

The lot [is] enclosed with strong Oak posts and rails, 7 bars high and measures 5 chains, 5 links square, and contains little better than two and half acres English measure. . . . [24]

In one corner of the lot was a half-finished log stable.

On April 10, 1809, Scull & Co., a prosperous Arkansas Post trading house, contracted with Daniel Mooney to build “a frame house 50 feet in length, 32 feet in breadth, and twelve feet high & to erect a gallery on each side of the house 10 feet wide and to enclose the same under a good & sufficient roof, the said building to contain four rooms, six doors & eight windows, all of which building to be finished neat & workman like & with as much dispatch as the nature of the case will admit.

“The said James Scull & Co. to furnish at the place all necessary timber & materials, good & sufficient to complete the said building, also to furnish the said Daniel Mooney with boarding for himself and such journey men as he may employ to work on said buildings.

“The following species of joiners’ work to be observed in finishing said house, the two ends to be weatherboarded, the upper floor to be laid down rough, the lower floor in house and gallery to be laid neat with [illegible] to wit, gallery ceiled overhead, all doors & windows sheets panelled & cased neat, chairs and washboard throughout all the rooms, & stairs to ascend the gallery on each side with hand rails & balustrades on each side, eave gutters and conductors on each side, for all of which work, when finished the said James Scull & Co. agrees to pay Mooney the sum of $l,500.”[25]

William Woodruff, editor of the Arkansas Gazette in the first edition of the paper on November 20, 1819, informed his subscribers that “There are at present but few buildings, and those principally in the French style; or rather since the change of government from Spain to the United States many houses have been suffered to go to decay, and but few new buildings, erected lately.”[26]

William E. Pope stopped at the post in October 1832. A number of years later he wrote:

Many of the houses erected during Gov. Dle Villemont’s administration were still standing and were built after the French style of architecture, with high pointed roofs and gables and heavy exterior timbers, and high chimneys. The old houses presented a sad but interesting picture to look upon. In many instances the tall chimneys had fallen down, and trees of considerable size were growing out through the roofs and chimney places.[27]

Photographs of dwellings similar to those in Arkansas Post can be found in: The American Heritage Book of Great Historic Places (New York, 1957), pp. 222-23; Everett B. Wilson, Early Southern Towns (South Brunswick, N. 3., 1967), pp. 322, 326, 330, and 335; and the three-dimensional model in the Louisiana Purchase Room at Jefferson National Expansion Memorial National Historic Site, St. Louis, Missouri.